I. Field of the Invention
This invention concerns mainly a drug-withdrawal scopolamine agent i.e., an injectable preparation of scopolamine hydrobromide subsided with chlorpromazine hydrochloride.
II. Discussion of the Prior Status
At present, various narcotics have been widely abused. Drug abuse is hazardous to this civilized society. Eutherapeutical drugs and their application are used for drug-withdrawal throughout the world. Nevertheless, in some countries, drug addicts are treated cruelly. They are arrested, sent to jail, isolated, forced to discontinue drug-intake and without any treatment while they intolerably suffer from abstinence syndromes. Drug-withdrawal without any treatment therefor refered to as `Cold Turkey`, which is neither medically approved nor under any approved regulatory provision. It has been widely adopted in many countries that opium addicts are advised to take a substitute like methadone, and to overcome the abstinence syndromes from drug-withdrawal by progressively reducing the dosage of the substitute.
1. Methadone maintenance regimen:
Methadone (a new kind of narcotic analgesic) was synthesized by two German scientists, Nockmuhl and Ehrhavf, to solve the shortage of morphine during World War II. It was first clinically adopted as a substitute for morphine in 1945 and put on sale in the USA in 1947. In 1955, methadone was used to suppress abstinence syndromes from drug-withdrawal of heroin, Since then, this method has adopted world-wide as an effective treatment for drug-withdrawal.
2.Methadone-clonidine for drug-withdrawal:
Clonidine, a nonopioid analgesic drug, was first proposed to be used for the withdrawal of heroin by the American scientists, Gold et al. in 1978. It has been therefor proven improve the drug-withdrawal effect of a methadone regimen.
3.Methadone-clonidine-propoxyphene for drug-withdrawal:
Propoxyphene is a synthetic substitute of morphine and similar to methadone in chemical structure. It is also a narcotic analgesic. It is inappropriate to use propoxyphene alone. The combined use of propoxyphene and methadone could improve the drug-withdrawal effect of a methadone maintenance regimen.
Another substitute like naloxone has also been used to ensure a methadone maintenance regimen but showed no beneficial effect when used alone. Although drug-withdrawal by narcotic a analgesic i.e. methadone maintenance subsided with clonidine, is widely considered to be effective, it possesses inevitable shortcomings of a long time course, high expense and drug dependence of its own. There has been a long search for drugs superior to that outlined above for use in drug-withdrawal.